Denison Mines recommenced development work on the Arizona 1 mine in April 2007 and restarted Uranium mining operations in November 2009. The mine is an underground operation employing a combination of long hole and shrinkage stopping methods at a mining rate of 335 tons per day, four days per week. Ore from the Arizona 1 mine is hauled by truck approximately 325 miles to the White Mesa mill. The mine employs a total of 32 people. Conservation groups and American Indian tribes today filed an appeal in the 9th Circuit Court challenging a lower court ruling that allowed the uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park to re-open without updating decades-old environmental reviews. The Arizona 1 uranium mine is located near Kanab Creek immediately north of Grand Canyon National Park. In 2010, conservation groups and tribes sued the Bureau of Land Management for failing to modernize 23-year-old mining plans and environmental reviews prior to allowing Denison Mines to resume uranium mining after the mine was shuttered in 1992. A federal judge in Phoenix this fall sided with the Bureau and the uranium industry saying no new plans or reviews were needed, prompting the current appeal.

The Arizona Strip is an area largely bounded on the north by the Arizona/Utah state line; on the east by the Colorado River and Marble Canyon; on the West by the Grand Wash cliffs; and on the south by a midpoint between the city of Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. The area encompasses approximately 13,000 square miles.

Six other mines are located in the area, along with thousands of uranium claims. Newly released data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows mining has elevated uranium and related pollution levels slightly in some areas, but that 95 percent of springs, creeks, and wells tested in the area are within EPA standards for drinking water.

"These uranium mines have been closed for nearly two decades. The public has a right to evaluate their impacts to water and wildlife before they re-open. Relying on old and outdated plans and reviews doesn’t cut it," said Taylor McKinnon, with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Allowing this decision to stand would shield mines from any further federal or public review once they have initial approval. That might be wonderful for the uranium industry but it’d be terrible policy for our public lands."

The Obama administration has proposed a 20-year ban on new mining claims and uranium development on existing claims lacking valid existing rights. A final environmental impact statement was issued for the 1-million acre ban in October.

Today’s appeal seeks to require the Bureau to complete new mining plans and environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, Federal Land Policy and Management Act and Endangered Species Act prior to allowing decades-old mines to re-open. That precedent would then apply to the other three existing mines in the 1-million-acre area should Denison try to open them.

"It is irresponsible to continue to allow these mines to go forward under both outdated plans and an antiquated mining law putting at risk some of our most iconic public lands, including Grand Canyon, plus allowing foreign corporations to so easily place claims and pay no royalties to the American people," said Sandy Bahr, director of Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter.

There they are at the podium…shamelessly pressing the fear button and exploiting the trauma of 9/11; selling us on the virtueof torture, wars of aggression, secret arrests and kangaroo courts; manipulating those who still trust them into accepting the unacceptable and defending the indefensible. "Elect me," they say, "and I will protect you." But who will protect us from them?

Those who founded this country intentionally limited the power of those in office. They did so knowing that ALL government trends toward tyranny. Those limits (as outlined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights) are the supreme law of the land. NOBODY is above them — not even the President. He too must publicly swear to "preserve, protect, and defend" the limits on his power.

“…in questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution…it would be a dangerous delusion (if) a confidence in the men of our choice (silenced) our fears for the safety of our rights…" -Thomas Jefferson,The Kentucky Resolutions

Our great "American Experiment" started over 230 years ago. From the threat of having the British Empire crush our nation in its infancy, to the unspeakable vision of Soviet nuclear warheads incinerating every major American city in an hour, we’ve somehow managed to remain true to our founding principles. Are we to accept those days are gone? Are we to openly embrace the tactics of Evil regimes we’ve vilified and stood against?

Did secret police, torture and mock trials bring safety to Stalinist Russia? Did wars of aggression and unspeakable brutality bring safety to Hitler’s Germany? How did the people of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Mao Zedong’s China do when their governments "got tough" on so-calledenemy combatants…

Using the threat of "another 9/11" for leverage, theterror profiteerscontinue to grind away at the foundation of our Republic. Like the great fear-mongering propagandists of the past, they paint terrifying images in the minds of the masses so they can secure their own unlimited power. …So they can elevate themselves “above” the moral and legislative laws that all others are expected to abide by.

If we’re to maintainanyfreedom in this country, we must forcefully reject these manipulative and disgraceful tactics. Torture, arrest and indefinite incarceration (without evidence, without charges) wars of aggression, wholesale violations of our privacy rights, zero accountability in government: These things CANNOT and WILL NOT "keep our nation safe." And in accepting these “policies” we destroy for ourselves the very essence of what we’re supposed to be protecting.

… But it’s legal thanks to George W Bush and his Patriot Act and if you really act up corporte owned police can easily rendition you to a foreign CIA prison where Bush/Gonzales said OK to “water-boarding” …

If you live in the United States of America, you live in a giant prison where liberty and freedom are slowly being strangled to death. In this country, the control freaks that run things are obsessed with watching, tracking, monitoring and recording virtually everything that we do. Nothing is private anymore. Everything that you do on the Internet is being monitored. All of your phone calls are being monitored. In fact, if law enforcement authorities suspect that you have done something wrong, they will use your cell phone microphone to listen to you even when you think your cell phone is turned off. In many areas of the country, when you get into your car automated license plate readers track you wherever you go, and in many major cities when you are walking on the streets a vast network of security cameras and “smart street lights” are constantly watching you and listening to whatever you say. The TSA is setting up “internal checkpoints” all over the nation, Homeland Security is encouraging all of us to report any “suspicious activity” that our neighbors are involved in and the federal government is rapidly developing “pre-crime” technology that will flag us as “potential terrorists” if we display any signs of nervousness. If you are flagged as a “potential terrorist”, the U.S. military can arrest you and detain you for the rest of your life without ever having to charge you with anything. Yes, the United States of America is rapidly being turned into a “Big Brother” prison grid, and most Americans are happily going along with it.

The sad thing is that this used to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.

So what in the world happened?

A fundamental shift in our culture has taken place. The American people have eagerly given up huge chunks of liberty and freedom in exchange for vague promises of increased security.

Our country is now run by total control freaks and paranoia has become standard operating procedure.

We were told that the terrorists hate our liberties and our freedoms, and that we needed to fight the terrorists so that we could keep our liberties and our freedoms.

But instead, the government keeps taking away all of our liberties and our freedoms.

How in the world does that make any sense?

Have the terrorists won?

As a country, we have moved so far in the direction of communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany that it is almost impossible to believe.

Yes, turning the United States of America into a giant prison may make us all slightly safer, but what kind of life is this?

Do we want to be dead while we are still alive?

Is this the price that we want to pay in order to feel slightly safer?

Where are the millions of Americans that still yearn to breathe free air?

During a Republican debate in Tampa, Florida, presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) alleged that campaign contributions from drug company Merck—the maker of Gardasil—played "a pivotal role in Rick Perry’s 2007 executive order that mandated teenage girls in Texas be inoculated against HPV,"CNN reports.

The order did not go into effect, however, as it was later overturned by the legislature.

Still, it’s hard to overlook the potential for undue influence and conflict of interest. Perry responded that the company gave only $5,000 to his campaign.

However, Merck has contributed:

·$28,500 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns since January 2001, and

·$377,500 to the Republican Governors Association (one of the largest backers of Perry’s campaigns)

"Perhaps more importantly, Perry’s friend, former chief of staff Mike Toomey, spun through the revolving door to become a lobbyist for Merck in Texas, a position he held at the time of the HPV-related executive order.

For instance, drug-maker Novartis Pharmaceuticals has also contributed handsomely to the Republican Governors Association and it has also benefited from Perry’s support. Novartis has donated $700,000 to the RGA since January 2006, although it has only directly donated $5,000 to Perry’s own campaign. In 2009, Perry signed a bill into law mandating meningitis vaccines for all college students, a requirement he expanded again earlier this year."

CDC Officially Recommends Gardasil for Boys

On October 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend giving the HPV vaccine to males between the ages of 11 and 21. They further recommend the vaccine series can be given to boys as young as nine, as well as to men up to the age of 26, especially if they engage in homosexual sex—allegedly to offer partial protection against genital warts, and cancers of the penis and rectum.

Interestingly enough,according to CNN Health, a large portion of the debate was focused on whether it would be cost-effective to vaccinate boys against HPV.

While cost-effectiveness is certainly an important concern, I believe reviewing the safety would certainly trump it. CNN reports that the cost to vaccinate 11- and 12-year old boys would be $38 million.

Deaths caused by anal cancer: 770. Gardasil is claimed to be 75 percent effective against anal cancer in men, so crunch the numbers… This is nothing short of insanity.

Why the push to vaccinate boys with Gardasil?…Because "girls aren’t getting vaccinated in the numbers doctors had expected," CNN reports. "If the boys are also immunized, it reduces the transmission back and forth…" Folks, this is a health emergency in the making. Please do not be deceived into giving this dangerous vaccine to your kids, regardless of their gender.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) shouldn’t hold his breath waiting for an apology from the teen that he tattled on for writing a disparaging tweet. Emma Sullivan, 18, said she isn’t giving in to Brownback’s demand for an apology because it wouldn’t be . . .

… Is this what “we” truly want for ourselves, our children and those as yet unborn …

Monday, November 28, 2011

The Making of a Prison Society

"That’s why you shouldn’t bring kids to protests."…This taunt, which issued from the sneering lips of an armored riot policeman, struck Don Joughin with the force of a billyclub as he tried to comfort his children – a three-year-old and a newborn – after they had been showered with a chemical agent by a riot policeman.

That assault did not take place during any of the recent “Occupy”-inspired protests. It occurred in August 2002, during a fundraising visit by then-President George W. Bush to Portland, Oregon.

After the police attack began, Joughin and his family attempted to leave, but found themselves penned in. Acting on the tragically innocent assumption that the police were present in order to keep the peace, Joughin politely asked the officer obstructing an exit how he and his family could leave the turbulent intersection. "He pointed and said to exit to the [northeast], into the spraying police opposite him," Joughin recalled.

Don Joughin comforts his son after the infant suffered a pepper spray assault by a Portland cop.

With his family in danger of being trampled by protesters fleeing the chemical barrage, Joughin asked the officer to let him and his family through. "He looked at me, and drew out his can from his hip and sprayed directly at me," Joughin recalled. He didn’t bear the brunt of that criminal assault, but his three-year-old caught some of the blast. The assailant then turned on Joughin’s wife and the infant "and doused both of their heads entirely from a distance of less than three feet," Joughin testified.

As his children were screaming in agony, Joughin pleaded with the cops to allow him and his family to leave and seek help. They responded by closing ranks and blocking the Joughin family’s escape. They didn’t relent until someone in "authority" gave them permission to set them free. The last thing Joughin and his traumatized family heard as they left the scene was the sadistic taunt hurled by one of the tax-devouring thugs who had assaulted the children with a chemical weapon.

While millions of Americans have been horrified by recent incidents of armored police officers beating and pepper-spraying unarmed, unresisting protesters, those nauseating spectacles are neither novel nor particularly rare. In “Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks,” a heavily sourced paper recently published in the journalSociology Compass, Patrick F. Gillham of the University of Idaho observes that current police doctrine dictates that public protests are to be treated as “security threats,” and dealt with using methods inspired by “a new penology philosophy.”

From that perspective, every public demonstration — however peaceful and orderly it might be – is to be treated as the equivalent of a prison riot. This means that police are free to employ every available means – pre-event surveillance, pre-emptive arrest, hostage-taking, and the use of incapacitating “less-lethal” weaponry – in order to “neutralize” people suspected of being “disruptive” elements.

Illegal mass arrest in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Under the “strategic incapacitation” model, Gillham notes, “police often refuse to communicate at all with possible or actual transgressive protestersexcept to issue commands once protest events have already begun.” (Emphasis added.) It’s not enough to confine protest to “free-speech zones”; the right to assemble itself is subject to modification or revocation without prior notice – even in the absence of disorderly behavior on the part of the protesters.

Typically, phalanxes of riot police will appear and slowly herd protesters into a confined area. An announcement will be made that the demonstration has been designated an “unlawful assembly,” and shortly thereafter the attack will begin, typically culminating with either mass arrests, needless injuries, or some combination thereof.

A September 2001 anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. offered the first opportunity to field-test this approach. A small group of anarchists were driven into an improvised holding area by riot police, where they were literally held as hostages: “After 2 hours of detention, police conveyed the terms under which protesters would be released to a neutral third party of legal observers and not to the detained protesters.”

Two years later, during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami, “police not only pre-emptively arrested perceived transgressive protesters, they also arrested scores of union members and student activists walking to permitted events, as well as credentialed reporters and curious bystanders,” recalls Gillham. Most of those arrested had not been ordered to disperse, and had violated no law – including a draconian anti-assembly law that had been enacted by the city government just days prior to the summit. In addition, Gillham observes, “Bails were set high as a further way to keep those arrested off the streets.”

The same approach was used at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 2008. In one particularly memorable application, 284 people were arrested at a public park in St. Paul, Minnesota on Labor Day 2008 during the Republican Convention. A huge contingent of riot police – supplemented by theNational Guard’s JTF-RNC, and equipped with chemical munitions and gas masks — cut off access to the park, which was bordered on one side by train tracks and the other by a river. This turned the park, however temporarily,into a huge open-air detention center.

An amplified version of the same tactics was employed by police in Pittsburgh when the 2009 G-20 summit brought the crème de la scum of the world’s criminal class to that city.

As helicopters plied the night air and serried rows of armored riot police assembled, a robotic voice announced: “By order of the chief of police, this has been declared an unlawful assembly. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. You must leave the immediate vicinity. If you do not disperse, you may be subject to arrest, and/or other police action” – the latter being a euphemism for summary punishment through “the use of riot control agents and/or less lethal munitions.”

Once again, protesters were ordered to leave, and threatened with severe reprisals if they didn’t – only to find that the police already had them surrounded and were determined to arrest and assault at least some of them.

Those crackdowns, in keeping with the “strategic incapacitation” doctrine, were not employed in response to criminal violence, or to deal with any impending threat of the same. Gillham points out that under the new approach “arrests are selectively applied to neutralize known or suspected transgressive actors often times before any crimes are committed.”

The same is true of aggressive violence employed by riot police, notes Gillham: “Less-lethal weapons such as tear gas, pepper spray, Tasers, rubber bullets, wooden missiles and bean bag rounds are now the weapons of choice…. Evidence suggests that police use these weapons as a means to temporarily incapacitate potentially disruptive protesters and repel others away from areas police are trying to defend such as entrances and exits to secured zones.”

Of course, once the riot police appear and the decree goes forth that a given protest is an “unlawful assembly,” the protest area itself is designated a “secure zone,” and those within it can only leave with the permission of their captors.

Thugswarm:Riot police assault female student in Pittsburgh.

All of this is manifestly the product of a military mind-set – one better suited to a military prison camp than a battlefield. The behavior of domestic police in dealing with political demonstrations is nearly identical to that of specialized “Immediate Reaction” forces (IRFs) deployed in military prisons such as those at Guantanamo Bay and Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

In his memoir,Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo, Turkish national Murat Kurnaz – who was kidnapped by Pakistani bounty hunters and sold into U.S. custody for $3,000 – describes his captivity in Gitmo (as well as Bagram) as a supposed “unlawful combatant." Any violation of the arbitrary — and ever-changing — rules of prisoner conduct provoked an attack by the IRF, a unit consisting of "five to eight soldiers with plastic shields, breastplates, hard-plastic knee-, elbow-, and shoulder-protectors, helmets with plastic visors, gloves with hard-plastic knuckles, heavy boots, and billyclubs." In other words, they were accoutered exactly like the domestic riot police who have become such a familiar presence in recent weeks.

Breaking a rule wasn’t a prerequisite for a visit from the IRF. The team would be summoned to inflict punishment for any act of defiance — such as an insult hurled at an abusive guard, or even an attempt to exercise. Typically the IRF would soften up the target by infusing the cell with a liberal dose ofMegyn Kelly’s much-discussed “food product”– weaponizedcapsaicin. Once the prisoner had been left entirely incapacitated, the IRT would swarm him to deliver a beating.

Former military interrogator Erik Saar provides a parallel account in his remorseful memoir,Inside the Wire.

“The five IRF-team MPs lined up outside the cell door,” writes Saar. “Starting in the back, they each shouted `Ready!’ and one by one slapped the shoulder of the next soldier up. The first soldier opened the door and directed a good dose of pepper spray at the detainee, then started to back him into a corner with his shield. But the captive managed to swipe the shield away and tried to kick the second soldier in line. He landed a good blow to the shoulder, but before he could put his foot down the third soldier, thinking fast, grabbed it and jerked. The detainee’s body rose in the air and came crashing to the metal floor.”

“All five MPs swarmed over him,” continues Saar’s account. “One was responsible for securing his head, and the other four were supposed to take one limb each. The detainee was kicking and squirming, fueled by his hostility. Mo [an Army translator] was shouting to him in Arabic to stop resisting. One of the stronger soldiers who had a solid grip on one arm was punching him in the ribs….”

Nearly identical tactics were used at“Camp Greyhound”in New Orleans, an improvised jail modeled after Gitmo and operated by FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Among those imprisoned there was Syrian-American businessman Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who was seized in his own home by National Guardsmen, imprisoned on unspecified charges, and escaped with his life only because of the providential intervention of a Christian clergyman who happened to visit his cell after Zeitoun had been transferred tothe Elayn Hunt Correctional Center.

For Zeitoun and the other prisoners, the Camp Greyhound experience was one of tedium punctuated by sheer terror. The guards exploited any excuse to inflict exemplary "discipline" on the detainees, most of whom had been arrested for violating curfew or similar petty matters.

"Always the procedure was the same,"recalled David Eggers in his bookZeitoun; "a prisoner would be removed from his cage and dragged to the ground nearby, in full view of the rest of the prisoners. His hands and feet would be tied, and then, sometimes with a guard’s knee on his back, he would be sprayed directly in the face" with pepper spray. "If the prisoner protested," continued Eggers, "the knee would dig deeper into his back. The spraying would continue until his spirit was broken. Then he would be doused with [a] bucket and returned to his cage."

The victims of this pointless and whimsical cruelty included one disturbed man with the intellectual and emotional capacity of a child who was "punished" because he displayed the irrepressible symptoms of mental illness.

FEMA camp survivor: Abdulrahman Zeitoun with his family.

These ritual acts of sadism, Eggers observes, were "born of a combination of opportunity, cruelty, ambivalence, and sport." They were intended to torment the other prisoners, most of whom — like Zeitoun – were possessed of more decency than their captors and thus left sick with rage by the spectacle of helpless men being tortured.

"Under any normal circumstances [Zeitoun] would have leapt to the defense of a man victimized as that man had been," observes Eggers. "But that he had to watch, helpless, knowing how depraved it was — this was punishment for the others, too. It diminished the humanity of them all."

The same treatment continued once Zeitoun was transferred from the makeshift FEMA detention camp to a “regular” prison. For more than two weeks he and his cellmate were abused, insulted, humiliated, and treated to a visit froma Gitmo-style "Extreme Repression Force" (ERP). Swaddled in riot gear, wielding ballistic shields, batons, and other weapons, the ERP "burst in as if [Zeitoun] were in the process of committing murder," writes Eggers. "Cursing at him, three men used their shields to push him to the wall. As they pressed his face against the cinderblock, they cuffed his arms and shackled his legs."

After heroically subduing an unresisting man — who by this time was dealing with an infected foot and a mysterious kidney ailment — the ERP tore apart the cell before forcing the victim to strip and submit to another body cavity search. By some oversight, the ERP neglected to use pepper spray on the innocent and helpless man. All of the prisoner-control tactics used in Gitmo and "Camp Greyhound" have been employed against peaceful protesters in New York, Oakland, and elsewhere

Civil libertarians are understandably concerned aboutsections 1031 and 1032 of the proposed National Defense Authorization Act, which wouldauthorize the indefinite military detentionof Americans – including those seized here in the United States – who are suspected of terrorism. That abhorrent measure represents an enhancement of current policies and procedures, rather than an abrupt departure from them. Whether or not the Senate approves the NDAA, the people in charge of Regime Security already consider this country to be one vast military prison, and are willing to act on that assumption whenever the opportunity presents itself.